As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is an Information Handling System (IHS). An IHS generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, IHSs may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in IHSs allow for IHSs to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, global communications, etc. In addition, IHSs may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
In the context of IHSs, a hard disk drive (HDD) is a data storage device used for storing and retrieving digital information using one or more rotating magnetic disks. The disks are paired with magnetic heads arranged on a mechanical arm, which can then read and write data from/to the rotating surface. Data is accessed in a random-access manner such that individual blocks of data can be stored and retrieved in any order.
A Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) drive is a special type of HDD where relatively wide tracks are written to the magnetic disk, and successively written data tracks partially overlap previous ones (similar to the manner roof shingles are applied). As such, SMR drives can store significantly more information per unit area than conventional HDDs. The inventors hereof have determined, however, that for certain input/output (I/O) access patterns, SMR drives perform worse than standard HDDs—particularly when tiered storage is used.